The Worst DayOr is it?
by Cheyenne-Hime
Summary: It has been eight months, Toshiro can only seek away from Soul Society once a month. What does he do with his time in Karukura?


Hi! This is my first fanfiction so please review and tell me how to improve. Also I do not own the characters or the places.

The Worst Day

Chapter 1:

Today was worst day of Toshiro Hitsugaya's month… it was the fifth. It had become a sort of tradition for him to sneak away from Soul Society to the small town of Karakura on this day every month for the past eight months. Today was the day he got to speak with Karin Kurosaki. While he had never formally told the seventeen year old of his fondness for her, it was there like a beacon in the storm of life. She brought him an inexplicable joy that no one else ever seemed able to.

Eight months ago that beacon died in a car accident. Karin was on her way out of town with some friends when a drunk driver hit them. Karin was dead on arrival or at least that's what Isshin had told him when he finally got a chance to visit her that night after his mission had ended.

Toshiro and Ichigo spent the next twenty-four hours without sleep, looking for her soul so she could pass over to Soul Society. With a reiatsu as large as Karin it should have only taken an hour to track her down but, it seemed she just vanished.

Karin and Toshiro had become good friends over the seven years they had known each other. Each enjoying the stubbornness that led the other to fault. She did however keep one secret from him. About four years ago, Urahara had approached her with a gift. He said it was a bracelet that would subdue her spiritual pressure to next to nothing. It would appear as if she had less then any plus walking the streets of Karakura. Being the strong willed individual she was, Karin refused to put on the bracelet unless she had no other choice.

The day of her death Karin had been chased by a hollow whom she had no time to kill (and would have been too powerful if she had tried), so she slipped the bracelet out of her backpack and on to her wrist with a move that had been perfected over the years to ensure efficiency. However, she happened to leave it on in her haste to meet her friends and the magical device that concealed her spiritual pressure followed her into her ghostly form.

At first she was outraged about her own death and the device that concealed her spiritual pressure still on her arm but Karin was determined to save pluses even if she had no shinigami powers to pull from. Luckily she found out that the device only concealed her reiatsu and did not feed off of it like Kenpachi's eye patch because she was able to save her friends souls from being devoured when the car crash that had killed five people began to attracted unwanted attention from nearby hollows.

It was at this time Karin decided that she would not have a konso preformed on her but instead watch over Yuzu and her family from afar so that she could keep them safe from the vast amount of hollows that seemed drawn to her home.

Today however was the day when her resolve weakened. Today was the day she wished she had passed over to Soul Society. Today was the day Toshiro came. It started simply, he would come by and leave flowers or just stare at her grave as if she might come out and tell him it was all some horrible joke, but it wasn't. In the recent months however, he began talking to her grave. Expressing grief that he couldn't find her after she died, and how she probably was in Rukongai somewhere with no knowledge of his existence. She wanted to tell him she wasn't to go up to him and say hello but if she did he might take her away to Soul Society and she wouldn't be able to protect Yuzu from there.

While their friendship had grown considerable and she even held a bit of affection in her heart for him, she knew that he was a rule follower and nothing she could say after revealing herself would allow him to leave her as a plus wondering around Karakura.

As Toshiro approached her grave she noticed he seemed different, his eyes a little less bright. She listened carefully to his words in hopes of finding out what was causing him despair. But then it hit her… it was her.

"Karin, I really hope you are in Rukongai, because if you were still here. You are probably running out of time. Your chain of fate should be nearly gone by now."

Karin diverted her eyes because she knew he was right. There were barely two links left. She figured it would just stop, that sheer will power could keep her from becoming a hollow. Deep down she knew that wasn't true but she had to believe she could to protect Yuzu. That was her only goal, it had been since her death. She noticed he had sat down by this point and was cupping something in his hands.

"Your brother never found you after I had to go back to Soul Society. We asked all the shinigami who were around Karakura at the time of the crash and none of them remember preforming a Konso on you… I hope I get to see you again, even if you don't remember me. It would be hard but maybe we could make new memories. Maybe I could tell you what I was too scared to throughout the years. There were so many laws separating us, we came from two different worlds…" In a rare show of emotion a tear slid down Toshiro Hitsugaya's face and he placed a flower made of ice upon the headstone.

"Despite everything I still fell in love with you. I love you Karin Kurosaki." Karin's breathe caught in chest. He loved her? A tomboy who would never put up with his crap… She loved him to. All of his faults and stubbornness, she loved Toshiro. She had tried to convince her self she didn't, that it was one sided, that they would never work. But, as she saw him come back each month to visit her the feelings grew deeper and her affection for him was deeply ingrained into her being.

There had been no noise for a few minutes, while Karin was taking all this in and processing her own feelings Toshiro was just staring at her headstone. Until, a light feminine voice came over the scene.

"It's time to go Taicho, Soul Society was reluctant to let you come here this month. We need to get back." It took Karin a moment to realize this was his busty blonde Lieutenant, Matsumoto. She seemed so solemn; it was an odd divergent from her usual chipper attitude Karin had grown accustomed to during her visits.

Karin grew anxious and worried as he stood. She didn't want him to go, she didn't want him to leave her. Almost unconsciously her right hand moved to the clasp of her bracelet and then it was gone, falling onto the forest floor.

It was as if time had stopped when her reiatsu that had been confined for months was finally released. Karin felt as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders as she took a deep breath and Toshiro turned around to face her.


End file.
